Page 20 of Never a Duke
Miss Tait twirled the lacy confection resting upon her shoulder and swished her skirts gently. “Mature complexions are less likely to need protection from the elements, my lord. Her ladyship is wearing a bonnet after all.”
Miss Tait’s smiling perusal of Lady Rosalind’s millinery implied that the bonnet barely qualified as such.
Ned’s usual course when confronted with petty sniping in polite surrounds was to ignore the barbs, stick to platitudes, and escape at the first opportunity. He expected to serve as a target for belittling comments, because polite society could not very well aim its vitriol at the Wentworth family proper.
But Rosalind’s bonnet was pretty, her freckles were charming, and Lindhurst was an ass.
“I actually prefer that a lady not hide away from fresh air and sunshine,” Ned said. “Roses in the cheeks are so much more becoming than a cadaverous pallor, don’t you agree, Miss Tait?”
Miss Tait, who had likely spent considerable coin on preparations intended to safeguard her cadaverous pallor, stopped twirling her damned parasol.
“Perhaps on a milkmaid, flushed cheeks are to be expected,” Lindhurst said, “but I prefer refinement in a female companion.”
Rosalind apparently found it necessary to stare past her brother’s shoulder, her expression a polite mask.
“Refinement is all well and good,” Ned replied, “but vanity quickly becomes tedious. Give me a lady who can command elegant reasoning and subtle humor, and spare me the die-away ninnyhammers with their obsession for passing fashions.” He smiled blandly at Miss Tait, whose expression had become a trifle uncertain. “What qualities do you look for in a gentleman, Miss Tait?”
She took a firmer hold of Lindhurst’s elbow and had gone so far as to open her mouth when Lindhurst spoke again.
“Miss Tait, being a lady in every sense of the word, wants aparfit, gentil knightin Bond Street tailoring, a fellow who will guard her with his life and brook no disrespect toward her.”
Ned picked up his gloves from the bench and tucked them into a pocket. “I wish you good hunting then, Miss Tait. The last time I looked, Mayfair boasted very few knights of the variety his lordship describes, much less in Bond Street tailoring. Lady Rosalind, shall we take a turn about the garden?”
He offered Rosalind his arm, and she took it.
“Good day to you both,” she said, nodding graciously.
As he parted from the viscount and Miss Tait, Ned managed to brush against Lindhurst in the close confines between the hedge and the sundial. His lordship, predictably, pretended to ignore even that slight contact.
Ned and Lady Rosalind quit the vicinity at a placid stroll, and a silence ensued. Ned could not read that silence, a problem he mostly encountered with the Wentworth ladies. Among the gentlemen, silences could be angry, thoughtful, or even kindly, but the ladies remained a puzzle to him.
“I ought not to have antagonized them,” Ned said, “but Lindhurst attempted to bribe me last autumn, and I take a dim view of such behavior.”
“Bribe you?” Her ladyship sounded merely curious rather than appalled.
“In a business context.”
They walked beside a row of birches, daffodils perfuming the air. The afternoon was pleasant, and yet, Ned wanted to be away from the garden. He should be back at the bank, though he didn’t want to return there either.
Young men are restless in springtime, Jane would have said, and she didn’t know the half of it.
“Let me guess,” Lady Rosalind said. “Lindy applied to your bank for a loan, and you declined to waste your money. He tried to grease your palm, and you declined that folly as well.”
“The bank has strict policies, and the decision wasn’t mine to make.”Thank heavens.
“But you could have influenced the outcome, couldn’t you?”
“No,” Ned said. “Walden applies a list of criteria and nothing outside that list sways a given case. Unlike private lenders, the bank can charge only five percent interest, so a loan in default creates significant difficulties for us. Your brother’s tailors are apparently still accepting his custom, however, so he came right somehow.”
“He always does. Lindy is a stranger to significant difficulties.”
Ned strolled with Rosalind between another pair of privet hedges and came upon a birdbath. A half dozen goldfinches flitted around the water, several perched on the rim, others having a grand time splashing about.
“Do the birds bother you, my lady?”
“Not those pretty little fellows. I take exception to the gulls that pester the yachting parties or to the pigeons with their perpetual mess.”
“I’ve always loved how much freedom birds have. They come and go as they please, and only God and the angels see the world as the birds do.” Even in Newgate, the birds had flown in and out of barred windows, and scrounged for sustenance in the courtyard. They hadn’t shunned the place, nor the crumbs left for them by a small boy who had moved beyond hunger.
